Monday, March 10, 2008

In one of those weirdnesses of synchronicity, I decided to set up a facebook group for the Business Exchange in Second Life yesterday morning, and then got a message about six hours later that a group had been set up for Metanomics too.

I'm not sure how useful a facebook group is going to be, but thought it couldn't hurt to try it. The problem I see is that Facebook has soo many groups, a bit like SL. And people are continually setting up new ones. I do try to check before making my own group, but it is clear that not everyone does.

The Metanomics event this evening is an interview with Richard Bartle, and someone on the Metanomics facebook group suggested that one should take the Bartle personality test for MMORPGs. Unfortunately, SL not being an MMORPG, it didn't make a lot of sense to me, and I lost interest once I had thought one too many time... actually, I don't much care whether I butcher a monster alone or with friends... monster butchering is just not my cup of tea....

Monday, March 3, 2008

I decided to check out the No 7 in SL shop which is currently on Avalon, having found the No 7 in SL blog the other day, as I reported then. Above you can see the No 7 Christmas skin (demo) face and back; No 7 Spring skin face and back; and my normal skin face and back, for comparison.

Finding the shop wasn't that easy. I looked up No 7 in the search menu and came up with a couple of groups. The No 7 in SL devotees, which amazingly (read on) has some members, lead me to two entries for locations, but refused to allow me to see the No 7 in SL shop location. I had to back up and click on the owner of the group, and look at her picks to find the shop.

On arrival, I realised there were apparently two skins available; they are in picture frames on the desk in front of the teleport point. The one from Christmas was available as a demo for $1 and in final form for $1000. The Spring one wasn't available at all. There was a texture on another picture frame which gave the price of the spring skin as $400 but the object was not set for sale, despite the fact that the blog said it had been released about a week ago. The demo for the Spring skin wasn't available either.

I contacted the avatar whose name was on the objects (who is also the owner of the group) and reported that the skin wasn't set for sale and the objects were wrongly named. I bought the $1 demo skin.

It's... horrible. Even at $1 for a demo I felt cheated. I don't know how many they sold for $1000L but all those people who bought it were ripped off. This is a REALLY bad skin. It isn't billed as a Goth skin, but is very pale and very patchy. The verdict I got from a few people who know was that it deserved 2 out of 10 for effort. None of them would willingly wear it. The patchiness and make up cause changes to the avatar face, and there are nasty brown marks on the body which would make wearing backless dresses or bikinis out of the question.

I waited a while and then went back to see if the fact that they weren't set for sale had been fixed. I can report that it had... but the names of the objects had not been fixed, there was no demo skin available. When I bought the skin in the interests of journalistic investigation for $400L, I discovered that the skin was full perms, which can't have been the intention. Fear not, not even the most desperate of rip-off artists would want to scam this skin. It's again horrible. I can offer a 2.5 out of 10 for it, and most of the increase is the fact that it is less than half the price, and the colour is slightly less corpse-like, although it's still very patchy. The verdict from my assistants? It's an old lady skin, with bad patchiness, including oddly light patches under the breasts.

I answered the questions about whether they had decided to go with nipples and genitals or no nipples and genitals: the skins have both. The pubic hair looks weird, and the breasts are so odd due to inappropriate light and dark patches, that I can't believe that either would be willingly exposed. The skins are poor and I can honestly say I have been given free skins which were better quality.

I think this is such a shame. No 7 is a perfect fit for skins, the idea of having a make up artist devise a make up in RL which could be translated to SL - all good. Did they actually look at the result in SL? What did the RL make up artist approve? And did they not get someone in SL to check the quality of the product?

The implementation is dreadful, and the quality of the work is so poor, that it is the opposite of good PR, it's destructive in SL of the RL good reputation of the company. They need replacing urgently with skins of good quality. I wondered out loud to a friend with long experience in SL who could have made the skin. She said "someone who ought to be doing something else". I can't help but agree.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

During a break in the Eduverse streaming last Thursday, I was ably introduced to the MetaLIFE hud. This is an attachment which you wear, which has a plethora of special features meant to enhance the existing Linden search, friends list, places to visit list etc. It includes a feature which is very like twitter, allowing you to follow other people or let them follow you, and offering reports upon what you are doing. It reports to you the tagging of places in Second Life, although it doesn't currently distinguish between a positive and negative tag, and it reports the "hot" places tagged by other metaLIFE users.

(For those who would like a chance to see the metaLIFE hud for themselves, there will be a demonstration at the Business Exchange on Tuesday, March 4, 12pm SLT at a special show and tell for gadgets.)

I was told that there is also a feature which allows you to buy through the hud rather than bumbling around the shops not finding what you are looking for. I can see that for people who dislike shopping in Second Life, or who have a clear idea of what they want, this is a boon, but for those of us (women, generally) who like wandering about and making serendipitous finds, well, it isn't so much of a treat.

I can see that a tremendous amount of work has gone into the hud, and that it has some passionate believers in its benefits, but I was a bit disappointed to see that the usual slingo-tringo-zyngo places were at the top of the hot picks. Places I am involved in were on there, the Business Exchange and Numbakulla, places which I think are a bit different and have some content, but they had one or two votes, instead of hundreds.

I hated the idea of allowing people to follow me around SL, with a hud reporting on my location. I generally switch off the function in the Linden UI which allows people to know where I am. There are times when it would be useful - when I am standing in front of a show and tell audience and have no show and tellers and no audience is one - but when I am building and want to be left alone, the last thing I need is something which highlights my location on the grid.

I had never used Twitter, and realised I wasn't really in a position to say what it was like and whether this was like it, and so I signed up to find out. Dear reader, I hate it. The system discovered I already had a couple of contacts using twitter, and so immediately signed me up to "follow" them, and thus I discovered with some envy in my heart that one of them was having dinner with Matt Groening and then attending TED, and another was feeling sick and had just taken some Tylenol.

I hope I have as much empathy as the next person, maybe I should hope I have more, but to be honest I do not think I can cope with daily reports on the minutiae of my vague acquaintances and friends. What I love about Second Life, and about its potential for education is that, despite the name, it gives you first hand experiences, and an opportunity to meet people that you might never have met otherwise. I don't want to know when they change their underwear, buy an attachment or go to bed.

It seems to me that many of the things which are mooted currently as possible improvements in the coming multiplicity of 3D worlds, are not improvements which are being demanded by the users of those 3D environments, they are either ideas from the world of commerce or from the world of academia and are based on ideas of what the residents might want and not, actually, what they want. When Michael Wilson from Theredotcom was asked by Robert Bloomfield about interoperability, which has become a buzz word in virtual worlds, he said last week "in all the times I have ever spoken to any of my customers they have never...asked why they can't use their Theredotcom avatar in Second Life, or in Wow...or in Everquest."

In many cases, people find a home and stick with it. I have a number of friends who play World of Warcraft as well as Second Life, but that's a game, and SL is not. I am sure that there are people who live on Theredotcom and also play on World of Warcraft too. I see no benefit in being able to transport my Second Life avatar to World of Warcraft so that I can become SL girly-gets-killed instead of a war troll or armoured dwarf. I like being my eternally-25 Cali avatar in Second Life, and plan on sticking with that. Even though she was based on my avatar in Uru originally, I now have a considerable investment of time and money in my avatar, and love, it has to be said. I wouldn't want to port her anywhere else because I don't want to be anywhere else.

The other side of the interoperability equation is the ability to take friends and move them between worlds, something which the beta test of Myrl is likely to allow, and the new Second Friends addition to Facebook already allows, through the medium of Facebook. I can see the advantages of being able to amalgamate friends lists from different places, maybe, but only real friends, most of the people I know in SL are friends only in SL and it isn't appropriate to take them out of there. They may not want me to know that the fairy queen elven woman I know in Second Life is actually a burly bricklayer in real life. Hell, I may not want to know that either, as the mental disconnect it may cause may affect my ability to relate to them in SL.

In my friends' list in Second Life I have people I see all the time, people I see occasionally, or talk to when I get the urge, people I befriended at an event and have never seen again, and people I helped as a mentor who befriended me in case they needed help. If I were to port my list from yahoo it would include people I corresponded with for a while because I commented on a blog or sent an email, but have never emailed again, people whose product I have bought, friends and family I have many other ways of contacting and a few people I am not close to who would be appropriate to that sort of friends list.

The point is, what with friends on twitter (good name) telling me when they have a cup of coffee, and friends on MetaLIFE telling me they have found a cool slingo-tringo-zyngo-badingo place, and friends on Facebook showing me 20 year old photographs (it came as a shock Clint, I tell you), and the possibility for people from myspace, bebo, Kaneva and Uru telling me other things about themselves... I am on information overload, and want to run away from social networking now and forever.

What I do see a demand for, is filtering technology, and that's what missing here currently. It isn't that I need more information, I need less. I want to follow and listen to the twittering of people who don't go slingoing, because that's not my thing. I don't want to be able to buy stuff instantly from a hud because I enjoy wandering the shops of SL. I want to be able to match myself up - without prejudice - to people who have similar interests and pursuits as me and yes, if I am honest, people who might be useful to me, might pay me for blogging or writing, or making educational games, or building in SL.

While Theredotcom is not my thing at all, I thought Michael Wilson had some very wise words drawn out of him by Robert Bloomfield in the Metanomics interview. he said: "If you've got millions of members who will tell you what they want on the product, maybe you should listen to them to pick out what to do next week, rather than making things up on your own."

I think that the many clever people who are working on ways to provide more and more information, twittering around the worlds of the web and the virtual, who are working on interoperability, permeability, conductivity and all those other shiny new features, would do well to mark those words.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

I don't know how highly I rate the blog, but I certainly like the idea that they have started making skins to represent the make up which the Boots celebrity make up artist recommends for each season. It sounds like a bargain... I am curious to know what they decided to do about the rest of the body, particularly the pubic hair/no public hair decision. And how the resident skin makers regard this encroachment.

I just wonder if the understated look which will suit people in RL translates to Second Life. Most people would hesitate to appear in public with the amount of make up that avatars wear... or the lack of clothes.

Browsing around facebook this morning I came across the Second Friends application, which allows you to verify you avatar name and attach it to your profile.

The system is quite simple: you need to go to the Eduserv Island and click a sign, to generate a key, which can then be fed into the registration page on Facebook. The sign automatically offers to open a webpage and navigate you to the right place to register once you have clicked the sign.

Currently although I have a few friends on Facebook, and several of them are on Second Life too, none of my friends are registered with Second Friends. There is also a mysterious box to be bought for $0 which updates your status in Second Life.